Mahindra has pulled off one of the biggest turnarounds ever seen in Formula E by being cut adrift as backmarkers in the first season of 2023, to being a pole winner and race victor in the final Gen3 season of 2026.
Anyone who saw the team humbled, bruised and broken after it was forced to withdraw its four cars from the Cape Town EPrix in February 2023 will attest to that.
They’ve come a long way since that dark day and much of it has come from sheer hard work and a stringent dedication to allowing the talent to have its head and freedom to express itself. That goes for engineers, sporting managers and the driver themselves. Managing all of them is Frederic Bertrand, who, new to the team principal role at the end of 2022 inherited a team best described as a dysfunctional spirit.
That might seem like a clunky phrase, but it is what Mahindra was. Under the idiosyncratic, occasional eccentric stewardship of Dilbagh Gill, the team had enjoyed some fantastic days, notably with Felix Rosenqvist in the third and fourth seasons of Formula E. This year’s Indy500 winner looked like a title contender back in the spring of 2018 but it was a false dawn amid poor reliability and often a scattered approach to the how the team was organised.
Bertrand knew quickly in the autumn of 2023 that he had his work cut out. Then came a miracle in Mexico City when Lucas di Grassi stuck it on pole and grabbed an unlikely podium. Another false dawn. It was all uphill from there, and the gradient was awfully steep.
So, Mahindra is back. But the truth is it has been since the summer of 2024 when Nyck de Vries and Edoardo Mortara started showing signs of massive improvement. When the Gen3Evo era kicked in at the end of 2024, Mahindra was in the ascent and it had a car its drivers could really get on top of.
There have been occasional jaw-dropping improvements before. Think Jarno Trulli putting his eponymous team o pole at Berlin in 2015; Audi’s fightback from that disastrous start to the 2017-18 campaign and last season Jaguar TCS Racing coming back from a rotten start to push Porsche all the way to the team’s title and Nick Cassidy getting an unlikely runners-up spot.
Here and now, Bertrand and Mahindra are in a good place. De Vries’ excellent victory last Sunday in Tokyo was evidence of that. It was a win through circumstance of the conditions, granted. Yes, the team pulled it off on strategy and adeptness of strategy, but it also proved that while de Vries brought home the points, Edo Mortara had bragging rights on pace. Yet again the sapphire-eyed Swiss twinkled his way to a pole position again, his third of the season, becoming the undisputed pole king this season.
Mortara has the capacity to sometimes just dominate on pace. The quick hands and the quick times interweave. His dextrous talent, on street circuits in particular, rivals Ticktum in often sheer magnetic spellbinding wonder.
Third place target for Mahindra
Mahindra sits fourth in the standings but within striking range of Andretti, is third place really on?
“Third is doable and definitely the target, yes,” Bertrand stated to Formula E Notebook last weekend.
“ I think staying in the top five we are already happy, it’s I would say job done from the Mahindra side, that’s what they were expecting when I would say they never really realised that we could do it, but they also didn’t realise the amount of work it means to do it to come back in the top five from where we were.
“ Now, we would love to be in the top three because it’s the step we wanted to do after Season 11 (2025) and to get to the top three would be a super good achievement, but again we go for the points and then we will see if we are as competitive as last year, we have a good chances to be in the fight but maybe more.”
There is a bit of irony in that it is de Vries and not Mortara that has twice stood on the top step of the podium this season.
Mortara has been the standout performer, and by a distance. Yes, de Vries has executed his two wins brilliantly, but Mortara has been the quicker of the two and the most consistent.
That is the perfect team scenario for Bertrand. One driver able to get an advantage over the other but the other scoring big on occasion. De Vries will be delighted with his wins, and rightly so, but knows he will have to improve if he is to get on terms with Mortara in qualifying especially.
“The good thing is to know that we have done what we have done already, we are where we are, two wins, four pole positions,” said Bertrand.
“I think it’s something super good in terms of achievement to showcase performance on one lap performance as Edo has done. And during the race, the team is happy too, here in Tokyo.
“Now I will give Nyck a bit of a cuddle tonight for one, and Edo we have to cuddle and calm down a bit but everything will be fine.”
